Thursday, March 14, 2013

Pope Francis and the Falklands

As a person who generally thinks that "belief" is what you fall back on when "factually knowing" is impossible, I generally don't pay too much attention to things like the Pope. However, as a British Citizen, I do pay attention when an Argentine public figure lands an even bigger International role as a Pope.

My immediate reaction was "what's his stance on the Falklands?".

In 2006, he criticised the Argentine proposal to legalise abortion under certain circumstances, accusing the government of lacking respect for the values held by the majority of Argentines, and of trying to convince the Catholic Church "to waver in our defence of the dignity of the person". It turns out Cardinal Bergoglio has also previously been outspoken in his support for Argentina's claim, saying “Las Malvinas are ours”.

So much for the respect of the values of the Falklander's...

With an Argentine at the helm of the Catholic church, there's a lot of political stuff that is about to start flying, especially since the Falklands residents just had another democratic vote to remain British, not Argentine.

We all know what happened to the papacy in the 10th and 11th centuries when the lines between religion, politics and military got all blurred…. If this pope is going to be a good one, he has to change his views to be fairer and straighten his public story up, and stick to religion, because right now Argentina just got a public megaphone that a billion people listen to, and he should not be used to sway public opinion on the Falklands.

If they go down that route, the pope will push a new piece of latin into the public dictionary where the Falklands are concerned: Raptus Regaliter ("royally screwed").